Electronic mail (e-mail), by this measure, is a pretty good technology. If you
want to master the Internet, learn e-mail. Forget Java and Flash and building
a killer Web site - e-mail is the most important thing on the Internet.

Why? Because e-mail is the single most popular use of the Internet, bar none.
In the jargon of the trade, it is the 'killer app'. It is far more popular than
the World Wide Web (Web).

Almost everybody who is on the Internet uses electronic mail. There are a few
people who only use the Internet to look at the Web, but they are well and
truly outnumbered by people who use e-mail and never look at the Web at all.

It reinforces people's existing relationships with other people. One of the
most common uses of electronic mail is to set up meetings. "Lets have lunch" is
a pretty common e-mail message.

It allows people to talk to other people around the world, cheaply and easily.
My partner, Neroli, is the Web master for RMIT International. Every day, she
gets mail from all sorts of places: Venezuela, Jordan, Russia, Europe, all over
the place. Every time it happens, it gives her a buzz. We have a friend who
is working in the States at the moment. He is talking to us via e-mail about
his upcoming wedding. It makes us feel like we are still part of his life.

It is convenient: it works like an answering machine, but in text. And it is as
easy to reply to a message as it is to read one.

Here are some hints for good e-mail practice, especially if you are going to be
using it in business:

Read your e-mail regularly. E-mail is fast - it crosses the world in a few
minutes. But if you don't read it regularly, they may as well have written you
a letter.

Respect people's privacy. If someone sends you e-mail, they will normally
assume that it is private. If you don't have explicit permission to pass a
message on, don't pass it on.

Use a signature file. A signature file is a little text file that is attached
to every e-mail that you send. If you are in business, your signature file
works like your letterhead, so put the same sort of information in there - your
name, company, phone and fax number. That makes it convenient for people who
want to ring you about your e-mail.

Use "http://". If you are writing Web addresses in an e-mail, write them in
full, with http:// at the front. That way, the program will probably show them
as clickable links, which makes it easier for the reader.

and use "mailto:". If you are writing e-mail addresses in an e-mail, write
them as mailto:jonathan@rmit.edu.au. Again, this means that they will become
clickable links, which can be used to quickly send another e-mail.

Mailing lists are simple. You contribute a message. It automatically goes to
everyone on the list. Any replies also go to all the people on the list. All
the messages get saved so that you can go back to them over time if you want
to.

You may choose to contribute often, or not at all. You probably don't know
everyone on the list. Over time, you will 'meet' the people that contribute
regularly: that is, you will get to know them. These people, by the tenor and
texture of their messages, will determine the mood and accepted behaviour of
the group.

Lists can be tremendously useful and interesting places. 'Link', for example,
is a mailing list which discusses Internet policy in Australia. Most of the
people contributing are experts in one field or another. Often, the stories
that appear in Tuesdays Computer section in the Age are things that have been
discussed in detail on Link over the previous week. For me, in my job, that is
great!

Here is how I use electronic mail in my work. It automatically starts up when I
turn my computer on, which I do as soon as I get to work. I put in my password
and the mail that has arrived overnight appears on my screen.

It is automatically sorted by filters that I have set up. Basically, these
filters separate mail into three groups: mail from individuals, mail from
mailing lists and mail from my boss. My boss, who sits in the next room,
probably sends me more mail than any other person that I know.

These filters roughly correspond to the importance that I place on the mail:
mail from my boss is a priority and mail from other people is very important.
Mail from mailing lists can be ignored - I will get to it when I can.

Mail from my boss usually comes in the form of copies of mail that she has
received from other people and that she has sent to other people. When she
forwards something to me, she often asks me to reply. She is using the message
as a trigger to delegate work. When she copies mail to me as she sends it to
somebody else, she is keeping me informed of what stage our latest project is
at.

Mail from other people can be anything from a set of minutes for a meeting to a
lunch date with a friend. Often, it has been sent to me along with 5 to 10
other people, all at once.

Mailing lists are one of the ways that groups of people can talk to one another
on-line. Other examples include Usenet discussion groups, Web based
discussions, real time chat (IRC), muds, and video and audio conferencing.

Usenet discussion groups are similar to mailing lists. However, for some
reason, many Usenet discussion groups tend to have a rough and tumble
atmosphere about them. 'Flaming' (attacking people in a vitriolic manner) is
much more common in discussion groups.

This is one of two major difference between mailing lists and discussion
groups. The other important difference is that you read mailing lists with all
your other e-mail. Usually, you need to use a special program to read
discussion groups. This means that less people read discussion groups.

Like mailing lists, the sense of community in any one particular group is
developed by the regular participants of that group. By their behaviour, they
demonstrate what is acceptable behaviour in the group and what is
unacceptable.

Anyone can join these groups - there is no fee. Anyone can post anything that
they want. This is both the beauty and the tragedy of the system.

I have no idea how many groups like this there are on the Internet, but it
would be well over 10,000. They focus on areas as diverse as the biology of
tropical fish to the latest gossip from Xena. They even discuss such mundane
topics as business communications.

Some of these groups might have 100 or more new topics appear every day.
Others might only have one or two new topics appear in a month.

Some Web pages that you go to also have discussion groups attached to them.
With some notable exceptions (see http://www.photo.net/), these discussion
groups are a failure. Usually, you find that hardly anyone has contributed to
them.

This is mainly because you have to visit the Web page to participate in the
discussion. Most people won't do that. It is too much effort for too little
reward.

Sometimes, though, Web based discussion systems do generate enough steam to be
interesting and useful. If you are interested in photography, I suggest that
you visit http://www.photo.net/ and look at the question and answer discussion
pages there. It is a very clever system, which takes into account how people
really work on the Internet. And it works.

All the communication methods that I have talked about so far are asynchronous.
That is, they are not dependent on time. You might send me an e-mail and I
might be on holidays. I may not read your e-mail for two weeks. Then, I might
reply. We did not have to both be using the computer at the same time.

But what if you do want to talk to someone at the same time, like you do on the
telephone? There are several systems that you could use, including chat, muds,
audio or video conferencing, or an Internet phone service.

Chatting on the Internet works like this: I type a message and it appears on
your computer, and vice versa. We can type to one another at the same time, and
have a conversation.

Inter Relay Chat (IRC) is a world wide chat system that allows many people to
talk to one another at the same time. Anything that anyone types appears on the
screen of all the other people contributing to that group. At first, it is
confusing. But, like any cross-cultural communication, as you learn the rules,
it gets easier.

Inter Relay Chat has been around for a long time, in Internet years. It is very
popular, and has a culture all of its own.

Web based chat systems try to emulate Inter Relay Chat. Unfortunately, for the
most part, they fail. Partly, this is because the Web is slow, compared to a
text based system like IRC. But mostly, it is because the tenor of the
conversation isn't very interesting. If you want to see what a Web based chat
system is like, try http://www.battleofthesexes.com.au/. Or, save yourself the
time and just try to chat yourself up in the mirror for a while. It'll be
about as interesting.

One of the most undervalued examples of electronic community is a 'multi-user
dungeon' or 'multi-user dimension' (mud). A mud is, at its most basic level, a
chat system with room descriptions tacked on.

So, you might enter a newsagency, for example.

"Running down the middle of the shop is a double sided rack of magazines and
newspapers. Here at the front, Vogue rubs shoulders with New Idea and House
and Garden. Further on, you can see that specialist magazines like Australian
Bride and Holistic Well-being are arranged by topic. The rack stretch for as
far as your eye can see. Imaginatively, all the women's magazines appear on the
left and all the men's magazines appear on the right.

At the front of the shop a cashier waits patiently to sell you a scratchie, a
stamp or just trade some gossip."

The difference between chat and a mud is that you have objects and places in a
mud. So, you could "Buy magazine from cashier", for example. Then you might
"Read magazine", at which point, you would be using an object in the mud. You
could also probably "Give magazine" to someone, perhaps pointing out a good
article. Or, if you didn't like it, you could "Burn magazine", perhaps.

The ability to program the space in a mud makes them ideal learning
environments, and great fun. Unfortunately, most people consider that they are
too much work to set up and run.

Video and audio conferencing on the Internet is fun, but it isn't the sort of
thing that you would use in a business setting. With a microphone and a cheap
video camera, you can hear and see the person that you are talking to. If you
want see how this works and you have Windows 95, NT or 98, then you can use a
program called NetMeeting, which usually comes free with your system.

Most of the synchronous Internet communication methods are useful in specific
situations. Video and audio conferencing is a good example of that. While it
does allow you to do things that you couldn't do before, it is not something
that fits into your everyday life yet. The video is small and very jerky, while
sometimes the audio is not too clear.

Early this year, we linked up people from Washington, Boston, Singapore,
Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. We could hear Singapore, but they
couldn't hear anyone else. Hobart had such bad sound that they withdrew. After
that, the rest of us discussed a particular topic for about three hours. We
could never have afforded that using a conference call.

However, having 2 out of 7 groups fail to get their message across would be
disastrous in a business setting. So most companies that want
video-conferencing spend thousands of dollars to use systems that work
flawlessly.

using the Internet to get cheaper telephone calls, using normal telephone
equipment.

The second meaning is the one that I am interested in here. It is the Internet,
but the Internet hidden. You pick up your normal telephone, dial a special
code, dial the overseas or long distance number that you want, and have a
normal telephone call. When your bill arrives, it is much cheaper. This is
technology that you can understand.

It is cheaper because the message is being moved from the expensive telephone
system to the cheap Internet system while it is carried overseas.

Cheap long distance communication is one of the things that people use to try
to sell the Internet. But it does much more than that.

Communicating on the Internet allows you reach people in ways that you just
couldn't do otherwise. I work for a volunteer Internet group called Virtual
Moreland. One day, someone wanted to find a particular person in America. He
knew this person's name, that they worked in the alternative energy industry
and that he once lived in a city in California. For two hours, we searched the
Internet for some trace of this bloke, with no luck.

So, having exhausted our own resources, we talked to a group of people. We
asked an alternative energy discussion group if anyone knew this man. Within
24 hours, we had a reply that told us his current business, his address and his
contact details. That is the way that the Internet really works.

You can meet people who are interested in the things that you are passionate
about. Another group who come to Virtual Moreland are originally from El
Salvador. Because of the troubles in their country, their friends and
relatives are spread all across the world. So they are slowly forming
El-Salvadorian communities on the Internet. All in Spanish, all working
together to find other people from El-Salvador and draw them into the group.

Over time, these Internet communities build up a body of shared knowledge. For
example, there are a group of people on the Internet who are particularly
interested in urban myths - tall tales that sound plausible, but generally
aren't. Between them, the people in this group probably know more about urban
myths than anyone else in the world. And they get sick of answering the same
questions over and over. So they have written a Frequently Asked Questions
document about urban myths. It gives generally agreed upon answers to all the
questions that keep popping up in the group. It is the distilled wisdom of the
group. You can access this wisdom, just by reading it. And there are thousands
of FAQs on all sorts of topics from pet care to electronic engineering. Yours,
for free, on the Internet.

Compared to other communication systems, the Internet is in its infancy. The
tools that we use today are still primitive, compared to what will appear over
the next five years.

One of the big areas of development will probably be in the area of
collaborative work practices. This is where several people can work on a
problem all at once. For business, this is a really exciting idea.

Imagine, for example, that you are planning your political strategy for the
next election. You have people all over the country, with all sorts of skills,
trying to contribute.

You all get on-line and start talking and typing at once. The system tracks who
is saying what to whom and puts all the typed ideas into a document. Then, as
the graphic artist in Sydney is doodling in the corner of the document, someone
else in Canberra can be adding a spreadsheet showing how many supporters you
have in each state.

Meanwhile the people in Melbourne and Perth have withdrawn to a private area
for a short time to straighten out some policy issues. They present this to the
group, and it is incorporated into the document.

Finally, someone in Adelaide is turning the material into a Web site while the
graphic designer is using the same material to make a printed brochure.

Will this sort of thing be in place by the next election? Certainly. Will
people be using it? Maybe, depending on whether it improves communication or
just makes things more muddled.